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> Nowhere because the USA has an excellent internal flight and interstate highway system instead. Railways were already becoming uncompetitive by the 1920s and now live on mostly in parts of the world where they already exist, where land is at a premium.

The fact that railways were becoming uncompetitive in the mid-1900s is why high-speed rail was developed. The Japanese pioneered high-speed rail in the 1960s, dramatically increasing the speed that passenger trains could run. That not only made trains competitive again, but hands-down the best mode of transportation for distances of a few hundred kilometers. The result is that new high-speed rail networks are being built around the world, not just in places where rail is already prominent.

In places where high-speed rail exists, it has taken most of the market share away from short-haul flights. If you want to get from Paris to Brussels (300 km), or from Beijing to Shanghai (1200 km), you take the train. This is despite the fact that Western Europe and China have excellent highway networks (China's highway network is now superior to the US interstate system) and plenty of airports.

> China is still a communist country: we know how that story ends and why.

China is not at all like the USSR.

> NASA didn't impress him, but the 30,000+ products for sale in a mundane shop blew him away.

China has an absolutely crazy abundance of consumer products. These days, Americans turn to Ali Express to get random widgets or knick-knacks of any kind. China is the place where you can pull out your smartphone, order pretty much anything, and have it arrive by courier 15 minutes later (okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but not much of one).

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mike_hearn 2 hours ago | parent [-]

People take HSR sometimes because it's heavily subsidized, especially in China. Without government intervention rail can't compete against airports and roads. China's railway is in a staggering amount of debt due to mass overbuilding of the sort that would have bankrupted any normal company in a market economy long ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/vt7jrz/a_whopping_90...

> China is not at all like the USSR ... China has an absolutely crazy abundance of consumer products

Products for export, yes. It doesn't have a particularly strong consumer economy because its model is to keep Chinese labour poor whilst building up huge foreign reserves and gutting foreign competitors. That's why Chinese consumption is still far below the US:

https://capx.co/xi-jinpings-coercion-is-destroying-his-own-e...

"private consumption accounts for just 39% of the economy – extremely low by world standards (the figure in the US is 68%). But there is no consumer confidence, with 80% of family wealth tied up in property and no meaningful social safety net."

	▲	willyt 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The TGV in France makes a profit. As does the Shinkansen in Japan. Intercity routes in the UK aren't high speed but are all profitable. Rural rail lines are not profitable and commuter lines are about break-even, depending on the fares charged. E.g. the tube in London is break even as it receives no operating subsidy, but it's quite expensive compared to e.g. the Paris / Madrid / Berlin metros. If you want to lubricate congestion in your city an easy way to do it is to encourage people to take a more space efficient form of transport by subsidising this. As a business proposition it probably makes sense for the overall region in the same way that it makes sense for a factory to move stuff around on conveyer belts rather than having everyone carry stuff from one station to the next. Britain has low productivity compared to the western EU average. It is posited that one of the big reasons for this is that our infrastructure is a bit shit.
	▲	ElevenLathe an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Air travel is also heavily subsidized, and road travel even more so. One of the real reasons for the interstate highway system (not the purported reason -- defense -- that got the bill through Congress) was to break the back of the rail monopolists (and, importantly, the rail unions). The American state chose to literally invent a whole new kind of socialized transport (marketed as a form of consumer individualism) than just nationalize and upgrade the railroads like every other civilized country.